Random Dharma

elitedaily.com/news/world/photographer-p...ults-are-surprising/

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompso...-the-wrong-concerto/

Pianist realizes the orchestra is playing the wrong concerto. I can't even imagine...

OMG. Great save. The look on her face!! At least it was another Mozart concerto she actually knew.

Not dharma, but I couldn't resist posting this for Nadav:

"Before you get to a place where you can actually make art with the skills that you learn, you have to master these basics. Mastering these basics takes, they say, 10,000 hours. That's like 5 years of 40 hour weeks. I'd say it's more like 15,000 hours, so it takes a lot of work to get there. And then when you get there, that's day one."

thisismadebyhand.com/film/the_knife_maker

Carl Sagan!

I really enjoyed this talk by Jill Bolte Taylor

I read her book a while ago. It's really, really interesting (particularly for that debate we always have on here about materialism/brain vs nonmaterialism/consciousness) and she's an amazing person, but I did feel like I would have been interested to see what would have happened if she'd done contemplative practice after the 'physiological enlightenment/near death' experience she had and all the changes it caused...

Buddhist Extremist Cell Vows To Unleash Tranquility On West

soundcloud.com/thewagonofjustice-1/npg-operator-1

This one's going out to Ona

The Topography of Tears

OOOH-- fantastic!

every3rdthought wrote: This one's going out to Ona

The Topography of Tears

those are beautiful!

Found this on Bicycling Magazine's site :

On Ridefulness

By Bill Strickland

This whole craze you must by now surely have heard about, of practicing mindfulness — roughly, a moment-by-moment awareness of your behavior, emotions, thoughts, sensations, and the world around you and the connections between them all — is actually a pretty old idea, like other modern trendy pursuits such as twerking and taking selfies, both of which first gained popularity in Egypt when the Upper and Lower regions of the land were politically united under the first Pharaoh in 3150 BCE. Buddha came up with the concept of sati well before the high mountains were introduced into the Tour de France, and by the time six-day racing was invented in 1881 the Pali language scholar Thomas William Rhys Davids had translated the Buddhist term into the English word “mindfulness.”

Someone I was out riding with suggested that, because so much of my writing about cycling teeters toward the spiritual, I ought to do a whole piece on ridefulness. After I asked what the hell it was and got it explained to me, I thought the topic was a pretty good one. Then we climbed a really bad hill and I was rideful on the whole damn thing.

I don’t mind being rideful when, you know, the sun is shining but not hot, or when the sky is that kind of blue you might as well not even try to describe, or when the pack drops some jackass then after a few more corners sits up and eats good sandwiches from their pockets or whatever. But that’s kind of the default for us, anyway. We’re on a bike and the world is better than it was before we got on, and we not only are aware of it but almost can’t be otherwise: We are flooded sensorily with beauty and with ugliness so striking it outstrips much of what passes for beauty in other people’s lives, and we are suffused with purpose and that marvelous aimlessness that can exist at the same time. And a cold Coke tastes better than anything. And you soar at the same pace as a hawk. And the next turn whispers something you will do anything to hear. And a hill makes you hack out a good chunk of your soul like a loogie — a stringy one, too, that gets all over your chin and makes people look away.

Cycling is so full of so much that we take its abundance for granted, I think. We forget that most people don’t live the way we do — that, for them, being aware of and awash in the world is an oddity. Our exalted state — the equivalent to the rare condition of intensified being that all these businesses are trying to implant into their employees, and that all these books are trying to instruct people to do, and that all these gurus are suddenly yammering on about — is not ridefulness but ridelessness.

Everything disappears. Kind of. You’re also kind of everything. There’s no bike, no road, no you. There’s just a ride, then there isn’t even that, but it’s never ever nothing.

In a few pedal strokes, a few minutes, sometimes a few miles, we become rideful again. Eventually, that ends, too, and we lean our bikes against the wall or hang them from a hook, and someone somewhere will get around to asking us how our ride was, and we’ll say, “It was great,” which isn’t even close but what could we really even try to say — that we were out snapping pictures of ourselves twerking with the Buddha?

www.laravisual.com/old-finnish-people-wi...ings-on-their-heads/

More Emily ...

We grow accustomed to the Dark -
When Light is put away -
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Good bye -

A Moment - We uncertain step
For newness of the night -
Then fit our Vision to the Dark -
And meet the Road - erect -

And so of larger - Darknesses -
Those Evenings of the Brain -
When not a Moon disclose a sign -
Or Star - come out - within -

The Bravest - grope a little -
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead -
But as they learn to see -

Either the Darkness alters -
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight -
And Life steps almost straight.

Does a dog have Buddha nature?

This Is What Happens When Two Churches Go Into An Epic Battle...

I stumbled into reruns of Lost on G4 recently and saw about the last season's worth which finished up yesterday. I guess not surprisingly it is heavily dharma laden, duality, non-duality, reincarnation, etc. Particularly as they get into the mythology of the island. It made a lot more sense this time around and I actually found the ending relatively satisfying.

Eric wrote: I stumbled into reruns of Lost on G4 recently and saw about the last season's worth which finished up yesterday. I guess not surprisingly it is heavily dharma laden, duality, non-duality, reincarnation, etc. Particularly as they get into the mythology of the island. It made a lot more sense this time around and I actually found the ending relatively satisfying.

Insert Dharma Initiative logo here...

Got my dharma fix here this morning:

activedharma.com/

I found it interesting, written in a way that is not very "Buddhist" but essentially so and with a nice intersection with psychology.